it's the president that runs foreign policy, not the attorney general. >> do you think politics was at play here, not wanting to do this before the election? >> that could have been. if that's the case it was a real dereliction of duty because the president is commander in chief. if the attorney general kept essential information from him which i think prevents him from carrying out his job as commander in chief, the attorney general has failed terribly to carry out his job. if the president did find out about it and didn't act on it until after the election, that's equally wrong. if holder knew about it, the attorney general knew about it in september, i believe he had the absolute obligation to tell the president in fairness to the president what was happening. >> you're chairman of the house homeland security committee. based on what you know now, do you believe national security has been compromised in any way by this affair? the fbi says it hasn't. >> we don't know enough yet. the fact is that the investigation was going on, they didn't know at that time whether it did or did not.